Secrets in the Flames
by Bloodshed-on-mars
Summary: When Beatrice Prior is kidnapped and forced to train to become part of the Secret Service, she is more than a little nervous. Torn away from her family, she begins a new life in Dauntless. But will she survive? Or will she fall?


Disclaimer: Unfortunately I am not Veronica Roth, therefore not the owner of Divergent

This story is written with emmalampe04

So if you notice the even chapters are a different writing style, that would be why.

Thanks to my beta Crazy Yognaught :)

Chapter 1

I slowly walked back from school, my plain grey bag swinging gently beside me. In front of me, my older brother Caleb is shyly flirting with our neighbour, Susan. Behind me, I suddenly heard the sound of running. Turning, I spotted Susan's brother, Robert.

'Wait for me,' he gasped, out of breath. 'Wait.' I smiled, stopped, glanced back at Susan and Caleb for a moment, before I decided to let them walk on together.

'Come on, Robert!' He caught up, raised his eyebrows at me as I started to laugh.

'What?' He looked up at me again, he was a great deal shorter than me. I pointed at his feet, and smirked. He looked at them, then down the street. One forlorn trainer was sitting in the middle of the pavement, lonely, and staring at his partner, on Robert's foot. Robert sighed, turned, then started to walk back to it.

'Wait there,' he called to me. I almost did, but then I saw the alleyway and decided to hide in it. A fatal mistake. I had not been standing there more than five seconds before a pair of rough calloused hands grabbed my arms and twisted them sharply behind my back. I opened my mouth to scream, but I had no chance to, as a rag doused in a sickening liquid was smothered against my nose and mouth. Seconds later, I hit the floor.

Hours, or perhaps days later, I never found out, I woke up with my face pressed against a freezing, hard floor, as someone kicked my side.

'Not much, is she,' the person sneered. 'I bet she'll be dropped after the first cut.'

A strangely familiar voice spoke up then, and defended my honour.

'We haven't seen her work yet. She must have been chosen for a reason. If Max has chosen her then I agree with his judgement.'

'Huh. If you think so. Though I can't say I agree with-'

While the man was distracted, I had got up behind him, hit him between the shoulder blades, and swept his legs out from underneath him - putting ten years of martial arts training to good use - and as he landed on the floor he looked up at me in surprise. To my shock, he started to laugh at me. I glared down at him fiercely, my hands curled in to fists.

'She's a feisty one isn't she?' Turning to the other man, he ordered, 'Take her to the room to wait for the others. I followed him cautiously to another room, in which there was only hard, dull wooden benches lining the plain white walls.

'Sit down,' he instructed me gruffly, 'And wait for the others.'

Slowly, during the course of the next hour, other people started to trickle in. Some looked tough, and sneered at me curled up in the corner. Three people seemed to make instant friends. Unfortunately for me, though perhaps not surprisingly, they seemed to be the toughest and cruellest of all of us. About fifteen to twenty minutes after I had sat down in the room, a tall girl bounced into the room, her dark hair billowing out behind her. She came and sat next to me, her dark skin in stark contrast to the achromatic wall.

'Hey,' she smiled at me. 'I'm Christina.'

'I'm,' I started to reply, but hesitated. Did I really want to say my name? When I didn't know any of the people, why I was here, or what they wanted with us? Then I have an idea.

'Tris,' I reply firmly, 'My name is Tris.' She smiles.

Five minutes later, I had had this bubbly girls life story, how she had moved house five times, three in the last two years. About her sister Rose, and about her mum, Stephanie. At this she paused, and bit her lip nervously.

'I'm worried about them', she confided in me. 'It will be harder for mum now that is just her and Rose.' I instantly felt guilty about not having thought of that before. How would my parents be coping? When did they find out I was gone? What about Robert? What did he do after I hid?

And Caleb. My brother, although we are not twins, was in the same year as me at school, and subsequently, we were close.

'How about you? Are you worried about your family?' Christina's questions had snapped me out of my daze. I opened my mouth to answer, but was cut short by the two men walking in to the room. Silence fell over the group. One of the men -the one who had been kicking my side- had a face covered with piercings. He spoke first.

'I'm sure you are wondering why you are here. Well, we are part of an organisation that wants to recruit you, called Dauntless. And we are a part of the Secret Service.'

He let that information sink in, as the group started murmuring. Christina and I shared incredulous looks. My head was spinning, these men were part of the Secret Service! And they wanted to recruit me!

'Some of you will end up having a job in the field, but most of you will be behind the scenes. Security, compiling information for a mission, making sure the agents are successful in undercover work, etcetera.'

Slowly, I started to accept it. They wanted us to work for them, okay. Okay.

'Now,' Eric finished, 'I hand over to my college, who will explain the rest.' And with that, he left. The other man stepped forward.

'My name is Four,' he began.

'Four?' Christina interjected. 'Like the number?'

Four turned to face Christina, and glared at her stonily. 'Looks like we've got ourselves a smart-mouth. Yes, like the number. Is that a problem?' Christina gulped and shook her head. 'Good. Then I'll continue, shall I?'

Four took a breath and turned to face us all again.

' I will be training you over the next ten weeks or so. The man you just saw, Eric will be training another set of initiates, as we call you. They are the initiates with family members still in Dauntless. You won't meet them until later, but you will be ranked alongside them. And before any of you ask.' At this point he gave a very pointed looked at Christina. 'You are ranked because after each of the two stages, the bottom initiates will be dropped. The first stage is physical, push your body to the limit, master the methods of combat. Learn to fight, and to defend. Stage two is mental, push yourself to the breaking point. Face your worst fears and conquer them.

A shy girl, I think I heard her telling someone else her name was Myra raised a tentative hand. 'What will happen to the initiates who are dropped?' She asked this question while mostly looking at the floor. Four smiled.

'Any initiates who are dropped, will join a group known as The Factionless, and live with other initiates who have been dropped. Now, follow me for a tour of our wonderful compound.'

Christina and I left the room at the back of the group and started to follow Four. The first place he took us to, was a place called The Pit. 'Huh. Inventive name,' Christina scoffed. But as we got to 'The Pit,' it became clear this was the best name for it. Four introduced it as 'the heart of the Dauntless compound,' and it was easy to see why it could be considered that. It consisted of a deep pit with a glass roof. It was a large underground cavern, and included places for different activities, such as tattoo parlors, built in the the walls. All of those places were connected by narrow steps and walkways, without railings or barriers. Blue lanterns hung from various points along the walkways. Easily the most eye-catching part of The Pit though, was on the far left.

'This,' Four announced as we got nearer, 'is The Chasm. It reminds us there is a fine line between idiocy, and bravery. A daredevil jump off this will end your life. People have done it before, and they will do it again. That's just how it is. But I have given you fair warning'

Christina and I stayed a bit longer at the railing than the rest of than everybody else.

'Breathtaking, isn't it?' She asked, turning to face me.

'Yeah.' I could only whisper, awestruck.

'Come on,' she grabbed my arm. 'Let's catch up with the others.'

Lastly, Four took us to where we would be staying for the initiation process, an uninviting chilly room, similar to a prison cell in my mind. The room was divided in to two halves, with twelve beds in one half, and sinks in the other half, one for each of us.

'We have to share with boys?' Christina whispers, obviously aghast.

'Well,' Four says, turning to walk out. 'Welcome home.'

Christina and I managed to get beds next to each other, luckily. On my other side was a tall, tough looking boy, with sandy hair. On Christina's other side, was a shorter, dark haired, boy.

The next day, we were woken by a harsh, deafening alarm. I glanced at my clock, 5:30. I sighed inwardly. Groggily, I turned over, only to be faced by Christina.

'Why are you not already up?' She demands, but before I had a chance to explain that I didn't normally get up until 7 in the mornings, she was ranting again.

'And now we have only 15 minutes to get you ready until we have to leave for breakfast!'

'Get me ready? What-' I was then dragged out of bed, and a pile of black clothes were thrust at me. Christina explained that it was my uniform, and that the gadget on top would alert me as to when I needed to do something. And right then it was beeping, telling me to get myself ready and to go down to breakfast.

'Quick!' Christina urged me. 'We haven't got long!' I grumbled, it wasn't going to take me long to get washed and dressed. Approximately 7 minutes later, I walked slowly back over to Christina and my bed, where I came to sudden stop. Christina was sprawled out on my bed, along with a range of torture instruments, or more specifically, make-up.

'Oh good, you're here!' Christina springs up and pushes me down on to the bed.

'No, Christina, really, I'm fine, I-'

'Shut up,' she advises.

5 minutes later, Christina step back to admire her handiwork.

'It's not great,' she shrugs. 'But acceptable in the time slot we have. Now come on! We only have 3 minutes to pack this up and get down to breakfast.'

On our way to breakfast. I caught sight of my reflection. The make-up Christina had put on me was mostly around my eyes. My eyes had been outlined in black, a stark contrast against my-paler-than-usual skin. My lashes were longer and more prominent than they normally were, and my eye lids were a light blue, which shimmered when it caught the light. The usual boring greyish-blue of my eyes were bright and interesting, and they shone out from my face, like a lighthouse. As I look at my reflection, I see a glimpse of a familiar face there. My mother, and for a moment my breath hitches in my throat. But even the reminder of my family can't stop a small smile emerging on my face.

'See,' Christina smirked, nudging me, catching me looking at my reflection. 'I knew you liked it, she smiled happily.' I simply rolled my -now beautiful- eyes at her and moved on.

We entered the meal hall, where there were long tables lined up, and a buffet on them. Christina immediately went ahead, the bold confident one, and sat next to the boy she sleeps next to, whose name I had learned was Will. She greeted him, and introduced me. Will smiled, and greeted to the two of us. I reached for some food, just as Four took the seat next to me, the only one left in the hall. He nodded at me in greeting at me.

I gazed at the food in front of me. There was so much of it! Toast, twenty different types of cereal, muffins, croissants, fruit, and accompanying them, massive pitchers of fruit juice. Back home, we just had cornflakes, it was so different here. Christina laughed at my gaping mouth.

'What?' I asked defensively. 'I wasn't expecting there to be this much!'

Christina raised her eyebrows in return.

'Have you seen how many of us there are?'

I looked around the hall. Christina was right. There were easily a couple of thousand of us in here.

'Okay, maybe you were right.'

'I'm always right.'

And with that, we tucked in.

Twenty minutes, and one bowl of cereal, three slices of toast, two croissants and one muffin later, Christina let out a large belch. I turned to her scandalised, my mouth agape. Christina meanwhile, was doubled up in peals of laughter.

'Thats...,' I spluttered.

'Cat got your tongue?' Came a mocking voice from the end of the table. 'Not sure how they expect you to fight if you can't even speak properly.'

Christina turned to the voice, fire blazing in her eyes.

'How dare you? My sister has a real speech impediment. And she, just happens to be a martial arts world champion!'

The condescending voice had no answer for that.

And with that, Christina and I stood up and left.

I lay on my bed, next to Christina, waiting out the last few minutes of breakfast. Suddenly, a beeping came from my gadget, and we both fell of the bed, me landing on top of Christina, which made us both burst in to giggles.

'I think-,' Christina gasped, 'I think I'm going to name them the bleepers.' I looked at the newly christened 'bleeper,' which was telling us we had approximately 3 minutes to get to the weapons room on the bottom floor.

'Come on,' I grabbed Christina's arm. 'We need to go now!'

2 minutes we burst in to the weapons room in a frenzy of giggles, only to discover that Four wasn't even there yet. How rude. Also, I noticed one other strange thing. This was meant to be weapons room. Where were the weapons? The room was completely bare. This gave us a chance to catch up with Will however, who introduced everyone to us. I learnt that the boy I slept next to was Al, the loved up couple were Edward and Myra, and the meaner three were Peter, Molly, and Drew. Peter was the one who had mocked me at breakfast. Just as Will finished explaining and introducing everyone, Four strode in. Complete silence fell instantly across the group.

'Well, you're no use here are you? Follow me.'

We followed him cautiously, confused. He led us down a set of complex corridors, perplexing passages, and wandering walkways. Eventually, we reached a pair of grand doors, decorated with flames, and burning coals. Four turned to face us, made sure he had our full attention, for extra emphasis, then threw open the doors. Behind him lay an array of different weapons, from guns and knives, to arrows and swords.

'Welcome to Dauntless.'


End file.
